


Trauma

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Castiel (Supernatural) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Castiel, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Phobia, Protective Dean Winchester, Reference to past murder and acts of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 14:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20047759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The search of an old house that contains numerous bodies of murder victims shouldn’t really bring up any surprises for Dean Winchester and Castiel.But it does, one that takes Cas back to a broken body, chittering laughter, and being covered and filled  by omething cold and dark.All Dean knows is that he has an angel in shutdown on his hands and he’d better find a way to help him.





	Trauma

_This_, Dean thought, _is a goddamn house of horrors_.

He closed the closet door over, once more hiding the mummified remains (he thought maybe it was those kids from town, the ones whose car was found abandoned just by the woods but they themselves were never found) inside from view.

That made seven victims so far and, as he pushed on, he ran through the list of missing people that had drawn them here.

For twenty five years, people had just been vanishing around the area, and Dean didn’t understand how the local law enforcement hadn’t noticed that this creepy old house was some kind of epicentre.

But then he was working from hindsight; a lot of the people who’d gone missing, well, the cops didn’t know they _had_.

Some had money problems, one had a embezzlement charge hanging over him, and some…. Some of them, yeah, it was reasonable to think they’d just moved on.

Dean hoped their spirits had moved on from that damned house but, once they were done here, they’d torch the whole thing just to make sure nothing lingered.

He heard movement below, and looked over the railing to find Cas had come out from the kitchen area, and from searching the first floor staff quarters.

“Five more,” he called up to Dean. “I haven’t searched the basement yet.”

“Just…”. Fuck, this place was a mausoleum. “Okay, I got one more room up here to check, and then we’ll go down together.”

It’d be quicker with two of them searching and, while Dean was too much of an old hand at this to get creeped out, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were going to run into trouble before this was done.

He found some poor bastard hanging from a rope in the last room, hands tied behind his back, flesh grey and dessicated, well past the point when the stench would have drawn in every critter, and every police officer, for miles.

But that was it for the first floor, and Dean was very sorry, then, that Boris Kendrick, the twisted piece of shit who’d owned this house, was already out of his reach.

By the time they left, though he didn’t know it, he’d be even more sorry.

++

Cas ended up forcing the door leading down to the basement, neither of them having any desire to stay in that house a moment longer than they had to.

The lights didn’t work at all; upstairs, it hadn’t been a problem. Only a few of the windows had been boarded up (and they looked like Kendrick had done it himself to cover some smashed panes - how many of the bodies here, Dean wondered, were kids who’d come around to torment the creepy old recluse and paid for it) and that had let in enough natural light for them to see by.

But the basement was different. It was wall to wall darkness, and Dean’s torch felt like a match in a blackout for all the good it seemed to do.

That was why Cas went first, easing Dean behind him and proceeding with a confidence Dean huffed at until he remembered angels could see in the dark.

All the same, given where they were, he’d have preferred Cas to slow down a little.

“It’s a utility room,” he said, turning quickly enough to stop Dean walking into something solid; when the hunter reached out, he felt metal and sharp edges, and a dial and some buttons on the front.

Washing machine, probably.

“Right. Anything in here other than detergent and white goods?”

Cas didn’t reply straight away, and Dean realised the angel had probably been shaking his head before remembering only one of them had celestial night vision.

“No. He conceals the bodies in bedrooms, closets, the kitchen, but not down here in the dark.”

Dean shrugged. “Guy was nuts. Just your regular sadistic psycho.”

And not within their remit either, though making sure neither his ghost, nor the ghosts of his victims, hung around, that was.

He turned, shining the torch beam ahead of him, suddenly eager to be out of there, when Cas grabbed at him.

“Dean, watch out!”

He wasn’t exactly sure what happened then; in the dark, Cas must have seen something he didn’t, and tried to steer or pull him back.

Dean wasn’t expecting it, and as he stumbled (Cas still had hold of him, he would have been fine, but his body thought otherwise) the hand with the torch flailed, and the sturdy metal casing clanged off something and the next thing Dean knew a jet of _something_ (black on black, he only heard it, like a gurgling sewer) had exploded over his angel.

He heard Cas draw in a sharp breath, and then nothing, and thank fuck he hadn’t broken the torch, because he swung it sharply around, saw the broken pipe that had slipped low enough he’d have cracked his head open on it, saw the sludge dribbling from the shattered edges, and then followed that to Cas.

It looked like somebody had picked him up and dumped him in a huge vat of pitch.

Whatever the hell had been in that pipe (probably built up over the years this place had been empty) most of it was now decorating Cas; it was over his dress shirt and trench it was smeared over half his face, and it was in his hair.

“Shit,” Dean said, because while he doubted it could do a damned thing to a celestial, he wasn’t ready to assume anything about this place for sure. “Cas?”

Cas was slowly looking down at himself, at the black slick now coating most of his body and clothes, and there was something so suddenly off there that Dean was immediately on his guard.

“Cas?”

“Get them off.”

“What?”

Cas staggered away from him, wiping then clawing at the mess covering him, ripping into his clothes and then into his own body, fingernails drawing blood.

“Dean, Dean, it’s them, get them off!”

Them? What the….holy fuck _them_.

“Cas, Cas, dammit, no. Stop it! Cas, it isn’t the leviathan.”

How the hell had he missed that after all these years, even a case of mistaken identity would terrify the angel so bad? That he still held such a deep seated fear of them.

He chased after the angel, tried to grab his wrists, to stop him hurting himself, and was damned grateful Cas seemed too out of it (or maybe he recognised it was Dean) to lash out.

Panicked, Cas could easily put him through a wall.

But he didn’t. He seemed to freeze up, cries trailing off, and then it was like somebody had flipped his off switch.

He just stopped, and that…. That was worse than before.

“Okay,” Dean said. “Cas, okay, trust me, it’s okay.”

He needed to get Cas into the light, and get that shit off of him and…

The water in this place had been turned off for years, and even if not Dean wasn’t ready to drag Cas into the nearest shower and hope for it and not more of that sludge.

But there was a creek right by the front of the property and it was there that Dean hauled Cas, half carrying him up the stairs, and then dragging him out the front door.

He didn’t have time for finesse; as soon as they were close enough, he gave Cas a shove that sent him tumbling into the water, and dropped his torch and gun long enough to follow.

It was freezing, but Dean grit his teeth and tore off his jacket and Henley, and bunched up the latter to use like a flannel.

Cas didn’t say a thing as Dean wiped his skin clean, stripping off his coats and shirt and hell, even the pants, because that shit was everywhere, and then scrubbed at his skin until it was pink as a fresh case of sunburn.

And still, Cas just stood there, silent, shaking.

Dean dumped his shirt, and cupped Cas’s face in his hands. “Cas? Cas, please. It’s okay, dude, come on. Cas!”

Slowly, the angel’s blue eyes came to focus on his, and when Cas spoke his voice trembled and broke.

“Dean, I thought.. I can’t…. Don’t let them….”

Dean pulled Cas into his arms, held the shaking angel close. They all had their demons, something they couldn’t face alone, but since they were family, that meant they didn’t have to and he told the angel that.

“I won’t, Cas. I swear, angel, I won’t.”

He waited until Cas had settled, a little, and then hauled him back to the Impala, and grabbed a couple of towels to dry them both off, before he dressed Cas again in one of his own hoodies and a pair of sweats.

It made the angel looked smaller, somehow, more vulnerable, which wasn’t always wrong.

Dean tucked him into the corner of the seat, and wrapped a blanket around him, and left him there just long enough to pour a can of kerosene quickly through the first floor of the house and set it alight.

They were ten miles away when they passed the first of the fire engines, and Cas barely seemed to notice.

He didn’t say two words the whole trip back, and, when they were stopped briefly in traffic, Dean took the chance to send Sam a quick text warning him they’d need help when they got back.

Because they’d both been there, faced with something they thought they’d dealt with, handled, only to find their head had other ideas.

If it took both of them holding him, for most of that night, to finally draw Cas out of himself, to get him to settle and accept he was safe , neither of them grudged it to him.

He was their family, and they’d been there, they knew and they understood.

And when Sam, like Dean had, promised Cas they would never let him get hurt by those bastards again, both brothers could tell Cas knew they meant it.


End file.
